1984 Returns to West End For Limited 12 Week Season At Playhouse Theatre

By Jacob Porteous

Following a sell-out international tour, this critically and publicly acclaimed production of 1984 will return to the Playhouse Theatre in London’s West End this summer. George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, adapted by Olivier Award-winner Robert Icke and Olivier Award-nominee Duncan Macmillan, will preview from 14 June 2016, with the press night on 28 June 2016.

Now seen by over a quarter of a million people, this Headlong, Nottingham Playhouse and Almeida Theatre production premiered at Nottingham Playhouse in September 2013. Since opening, 1984 has played to packed houses at the Almeida Theatre, as well as throughout its two West End runs and in performances across the globe during national and international tours.

The definitive book of the 20th century is re-examined in a radical, award-winning adaptation exploring surveillance, identity and why Orwell’s vision of the future is as relevant now as ever.

1984 is directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan with Daniel Raggett, Set and Costume is designed by Chloe Lamford, with Lighting designed by Natasha Chivers, Sound designed by Tom Gibbons and Video designed by Tim Reid.

George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, is one of the most influential novels in recent history, with its chilling depiction of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance and incessant public mind-control. Its ideas have become our ideas, and Orwell’s fiction is often said to be our reality.

Robert Icke has directed numerous productions as Almeida Associate Director including his own adaptations of Uncle Vanya and Oresteia (which transferred to Trafalgar Studios, and for which he won the Olivier, Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Best Director), The Fever at The May Fair Hotel and Mr Burns. Robert’s work as a director also includes Boys and Romeo and Juliet for Headlong. He will make his National Theatre debut directing The Red Barn at the Lyttleton Theatre in October.

Duncan Macmillan’s plays include People, Places and Things (nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Play) which opened at the National Theatre and has transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End; Every Brilliant Thing for Paines Plough on tour in the UK, New York, Australia and New Zealand; and Lungs for Paines Plough and at Schaubühne in Berlin, directed by Katie Mitchell.